From Soho With Love
by athousandelegies
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley join forces with a human to retrieve a contract from Hell's Department of Immortal Soul Agreements. A soul is on the line, and maybe a relationship too.
1. Chapter 1

Crowley had been dreaming of this day for…well, for a long time. But somehow his fantasies had never included a human chasing him with an overlarge crucifix and a jar of holy water.

* * *

The demon had never figured out how such tiny bells managed to make jingling sound so unfriendly, but he had come to welcome the noise. It was familiar. Like the hum of the Bentley purring beneath his feet, or the annoyed huff currently emanating from the back of the shop.

"Look, closing time is just about t — oh! Crowley! What a pleasant surprise." Aziraphale's features softened into a warm smile as he emerged from the back room. He hurried forward to greet the demon. "It's been too long."

"It's been a week, angel," Crowley laughed, but he agreed. Things had changed after the Apocalypse _hadn't_ happened, and now it was a rare day the two didn't meet to eat, talk, drink, or reminisce. "My people finally contacted me, asked why I haven't been turning in reports, so I guess I still have a job."

"But they still haven't mentioned the whole…Armageddon thing, right?" Aziraphale asked worriedly.

"No, not a word of that," Crowley reassured him, placing a hand on the angel's shoulder. They didn't know whether Adam had messed with their Superiors' heads or if Heaven and Hell were simply pretending nothing had happened — you never knew with bureaucrats — but either way, it had been nearly half a year and neither of them had faced any consequences as of yet for their actions.

"Good, good," Aziraphale said, brushing at a nonexistent bit of dust on Crowley's sleeve. "If anything were to happen to you, _now_ , well…I don't know what I would do, Crowley."

It was not a good time for Crowley's sunglasses to slip down the bridge of his nose. But slip they did, and their eyes met over the frame. Aziraphale's eyes were glistening, earnest as anything. Crowley's slitted pupils dilated.

A dusty cough echoed through the room, which had quickly returned to its usual state of grime and disorder after Adam had willed it back into existence. Aziraphale had sold all the first editions the young antichrist had filled the new shop with, which were not to his taste but which were worth a _lot_ of money, and had lost no time finding new volumes to stuff the shelves with.

"Humph, I thought I'd scared away — ahem, that all the customers had gone," Aziraphale said. A head poked out from between two bookshelves: a young woman, in her early twenties or so, short red hair blazing even in the limited light of the shop.

"Just give me a few minutes, I'm almost done," she told them, her accent rolling with an Irish cadence.

"Oh goodness!" Aziraphale exclaimed, eyeing the books piled high in her arms with alarm. "You can't — I'm sorry, but you simply cannot buy those. Please put them back."

"What, all of them?" she said in surprise, looking down at the volumes. "I don't under—"

"Yes, yes, all of them, put them back now," Aziraphale snapped, "and then be on your way. Er, _please_."

"Unbelievable," the woman muttered under her breath, turning back to the shelves. She began shoving books in at random; Aziraphale let out a dramatic gasp and rushed to her side.

"On second thought just hand them over and be on your way," he said quickly, taking the books from her.

"What's wrong with you?" she demanded, standing her ground as he tried to propel her towards the door. "Who the bloody hell owns a _bookshop_ and doesn't let people buy any of the _books_?"

While Crowley loved watching a good quarrel unfold between his angel and a disgruntled customer, what he wanted right now was to be alone with Aziraphale. He decided to step in.

" _Lissssten_ ," he hissed, making sure she got a good look at his gleaming golden eyes, "I think it would be bessssst if you got going."

The woman's eyes widened with an emotion Crowley couldn't identify, but it was akin enough to fear to satisfy him. "You—you're—you're—" she spluttered, backing away towards the door.

Crowley gestured, and the door swung open as if caught on a gust of wind. He bowed her out as she half-staggered, half-ran away, glancing behind her several times to stare some more.

"Now dear, I thought we had agreed to keep a low profile…" Aziraphale chided.

"Eh, to hell with low profiles," Crowley said, heart suddenly racing. Aziraphale had neared him once again, and was it just him or was it getting rather warm—

"Crowley," Aziraphale said firmly, gazing into the demon's eyes again. "Do you know, I am getting the strangest reading from your aura right now."

"I-is that right?" Crowley stammered. "F-funny stuff, auras, who really knows how to read them properly." He tried desperately to clamp his down, but it remained stubbornly wild, waving forwards and back like a time-lapse tide.

It was _much_ too hot in this shop. And Aziraphale's face was so close to his—

And then their lips connected. Only then did Crowley realize with a start that the angel's aura was just as wild as his own. The erratic colors met and merged, bright and warm and washing over their tangled arms, their flushed faces, their chests pressed close.

Crowley shifted the tilt of his head, and their glasses clinked together. With an impatient snap of his fingers his shades dissolved, but Aziraphale just laughed low in his throat and pulled away to take his own spectacles off. He folded them, carefully, and placed them on a nearby shelf — too slowly for the demon, who hissed and pulled his angel close to him again.

After several minutes that felt both longer than all their six thousand years and shorter than a breath, they pulled apart again. Neither being _needed_ to breathe, yet both were breathing hard.

Aziraphale's dark curls were sticking out every which way, disheveled by Crowley's fingers. The demon felt suddenly embarrassed, and unconsciously stepped backwards, putting some space between them. Their auras, however, still mingled, a blushing, rosy hue.

"Well," said Aziraphale, his voice calm, almost businesslike, "this is quite the development."

Crowley laughed, and the tension drained from his limbs. He wandered over to the shop's counter and leaned against it, grinning goofily at the angel. "It's about time," he said, running his fingers through his own tousled hair. He thought a moment. "It's…you're _okay_ with it, right?"

"Yes." Aziraphale joined him at the counter, took his hand in his. "Dear me, yes."

" _Step away from him!"_

Crowley tore his gaze away from Aziraphale's to look toward the front door, which had just been thrown open. The bells jangled angrily above the determined face of the same young woman Crowley had chased from the shop ten minutes before. She was panting, as if she had been running as fast as she could, and she was brandishing a crucifix like an ornate, unwieldy gun.

"Demon!" she barked. "You leave this man alone!" She waved the heavy crucifix clumsily with one hand, stepping forward. Crowley rolled his eyes — until he noticed what she had tucked under her other arm.

A jar of water, which he could only assume was…

"That's right. Holy water, fiend," she snarled, following his gaze. "Prepare yourself to meet your—"

"Dear girl, please," Aziraphale said, throwing up his arms and stepping in front of Crowley, whose blood had drained from his face. "There is no need for this, no need at all."

"He has you under his thrall, don't you see that?" she implored of the shopkeeper, fiddling with the jar's lid as she spoke. "He's going to take your soul, just like Bea's, if I don't do something—"

"Az, she's got the lid off, Az — _Aziraphale_!"

Water arched across the space between them, and for a moment, time froze in a tableaux: the scared but determined girl with her arm extended, the stout shopkeeper in his tartan jumper and the horrorstruck demon behind him.

The ripping of wool: the angel had thrown his wings open, but too late — Crowley howled as droplets of holy water splashed across his skin like a morning mist. He crumpled to the floor, hands over his face.


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale dropped down beside him, moaning softly, draping his wings over the demon's crumpled form. "Crowley, don't you dare…Crowley…"

Images flashed across Crowley's mind, of Ligur, drenched in holy water, skin fizzing and popping and melting into nothingness. Even a droplet of the stuff had the power to wipe a demon off the face of the Earth — and Hell too. This was it. The end for him.

At least he would go in Aziraphale's arms.

But nothing happened.

They sat there, cradling each other, waiting for the insidious liquid to corrode his very essence away. But the droplets glimmered harmlessly on his dark skin, didn't even burn.

"Perhaps…perhaps it was blessed improperly?" Aziraphale hazarded.

They both turned their eyes back to the front door, where the human still stood, eyes wide and mouth gaping, the empty jar dangling loosely in one hand and the cross in the other.

"Excuse me," Aziraphale inquired, "where did you get this holy water?"

It took her a moment to speak. "S-Saint Patrick's," she managed at last. "Soho Square."

"Ah, no, they would do it properly there. Now," the angel said, standing and winching his wings back in, "Miss — what's your name?"

The girl seemed to hesitate before giving up her name. "Aedan," she answered cautiously.

"Aedan. Do you know what I am?"

"Either angel or demon, I think," she said shakily. "Angel would make more sense, since you shielded that _fiend_ behind you from the water instead of running from it yourself…but why would you be helping a demon?"

"Angel indeed," he said, putting on his most heavenly smile. "And this demon is my…er, what word do you humans use…my ward? My…parolee."

"Your parolee." She did not look convinced.

Crowley pulled himself to his feet on still shaky limbs, wiping the ineffective holy water away with a shudder as Aziraphale answered, "Yes. You see, I am part of an experimental faction of angels. When a demon shows signs of remorse or virtuousness, we approach them — take them under our wing, you might say — and try to reform them. You know — get them to come back to our side."

"Huh." Aedan scrunched up her nose. "That is not how I expected Heaven to work."

"Bea," Crowley interrupted, "you mentioned someone named Bea before?"

"Yes," Aedan bit out, suspicion draping her features. "What do you know about my Beatrice?"

"Did they make a deal with a demon, dear?" Aziraphale asked.

Whatever fight she had left drained from the girl; freckles stark on her pallid face, she staggered backwards and leaned against the door, barely keeping upright. The crucifix clattered to the floor.

"This is nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense," she said as Aziraphale took her by the arm and led her to a chair that conveniently popped into existence just then.

"If you tell me what happened," Aziraphale said soothingly, "perhaps I can help. I _am_ an angel after all."

Crowley scoffed, folding his arms across his chest. If a human had made a contract with Hell, there was no helping them now. And why was Aziraphale so keen to help this girl anyway? Even aside from the fact that she had just attempted murder, souls already won over by Hell were way out of any angel's jurisdiction.

"Bea needed…needed something, and a devil got it for her," Aedan said slowly. "A demon with eyes like yours," she said, glaring over Aziraphale's shoulder at Crowley. "only they were red. Red as hellfire. And he stole her soul."

"Well, I don't think _stole_ is a fair word—" Crowley began, but Aziraphale cut him off with a sharp look. "What?" he demanded. "Did you forget this human just tried to _melt_ _me out of existence_?"

"Can you _blame_ her?" Aziraphale asked.

"Whatever," Crowley snapped. He could use a drink, and he had had enough of watching Aziraphale cozy up to his attempted murderer. "Next time you try to kill a demon, kid," he said as he headed for the back room and its ample wine supply, "make sure the water's actually _blessed_."

"Crowley, please—" he heard Aziraphale call after him as he slammed the door to the back room shut.

 _Why_ did Aziraphale have to be so _infuriating_? He yanked a bottle from the rack and uncorked it with a vicious twist of the corkscrew. Laying on the blessed heavenly _charm_ for some human who wanted Crowley dead — and right after they'd just…just…

He put one hand (the one that wasn't wrapped around the bottle's neck in a death grip) to his mouth, which tingled with memory. How long he had wondered what the angel's lips would feel like on his. And now…well. Trust Aziraphale to ruin the moment.

 _Not Aziraphale_ , one part of his brain reminded him. _That human._ Fine. That human – _and_ Aziraphale.

All he wanted was for his mind to shut down, but it raced with questions. That _had_ been holy water, from a legitimate church. And it hadn't so much as stung him.

Taking several gulps of wine (which, like all the wine Adam had restored after the fire, possessed a faintly smoky flavor), Crowley's ears twitched as they tuned in to the conversation going on in the other room.

"Well, Aedan. As an angel, I commend you for your actions—" Crowley resisted the urge to hurl the wine bottle at the wall— "but I must advise you not to make any further attempts at my, er, parolee's life."

"Would it get you in trouble or something?"

"…Yes. But also, we may be needing him, if we are going to save your friend—"

"Girlfriend."

"Girlfriend," Aziraphale corrected himself.

"So Heaven's cool with that, huh? The whole gay thing?"

"Certainly dear, certainly. It's you humans who came up with all these gender rules, not us."

"Oh, I can't wait to tell my mam." Crowley heard the triumph in her voice. "Anyway…No more attacking the demon, got it." Crowley heard the girl clear her throat. "So…you really think we can save Bea?"

"I am confident of it. With Crowley's assistance."

"A demon double agent. Wicked."

This was too much for Crowley. He burst out of the back room, wine bottle in hand. "And how, exactly," he demanded of both of them, "do you intend to convince me to help you on this…this harebrained heist of yours?"

"Well," said Aziraphale, his sensible tone doing nothing to assuage Crowley's ire, "I've never known you to pass up a chance to play at those James Bond films you love so much."


	3. Chapter 3

Aziraphale knew his demon's weaknesses, and Crowley possessed no greater one than his penchant for playing the action hero. As far as Aziraphale could figure, it was what had convinced Crowley to stand up against Satan himself, and it was the main selling point in getting him on their side now.

"You keep booze back there?" Aedan asked, eyeing the wine bottle in Crowley's hand. "I sure could use some."

"Hmm? Yes, yes," Aziraphale said. "Why don't we all go in the back room and make ourselves comfortable."

Crowley rolled his eyes behind the shades he'd re-conjured, slouched his back, made a show of sitting as far away from Aedan as the table would allow. Aziraphale just smiled. He knew a performance when he saw one.

Aedan nursed a glass, and the two supernatural entities steadily drained a bottle each as she told her story.

"I'm going to keep this short, if that's all right with you—"

"Definitely all right," Crowley interrupted. Aziraphale elbowed him.

"Well." The girl ran her hand through her cropped red hair. "Bea's sister, Alice, might be the one person in the world she loves more than me. Alice has a heart defect — _had_ ," Aedan corrected herself. "Had a heart defect. She was dying of it. Bea was desperate to do anything to win her an extra year, an extra month, anything—"

"So she sold her soul to heal her sister, we get it," Crowley said. "I thought you promised to keep this short." Aedan glared at him.

" _Dear_ ," Aziraphale said, through gritted teeth, "this information is important. Let the human talk."

"Yeah. So. One day, a couple months ago, Bea gets this phone call, and I sort of can't help overhearing the conversation — we live together, we're both students at King's College. It was a man's voice. Not like any voice I'd ever heard, though." Aedan shivered. "Silky but _sharp_ , I can't explain it. I couldn't make out all he said, but I heard enough to get worried. He told her he could save Alice's life, if Bea would just come to a certain address and make a deal with him. We fought about it, but she insisted on going —" the girl's face crumpled. She looked suddenly very young, and very tired.

Aziraphale stood up and went to her side of the table, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Take your time, dear." Glad that Crowley was keeping his mouth shut for once, he pulled a green-and-blue handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.

Aedan smiled shakily. "Tartan, huh? Very nice."

The angel beamed. "Isn't it?" He shot a look Crowley's way, to say, _I_ told _you tartan was stylish._

Wiping her eyes and nose on the handkerchief, Aedan continued as Aziraphale returned to his seat. "I went with Bea to the address he gave her, no way was I letting her go alone. And, it was…it's really hard to explain this part…" Her eyes went distant, as if she were struggling to bring a faded memory to the surface of her mind. She rubbed at her temples. "We entered the place, there was a man with red eyes, diamond pupils like _yours_ — and he said something about how she wasn't supposed to have brought anyone with her and then…I woke up. I was slumped in a chair in our kitchen, no memory of where the hell the office even _was_ or what it looked like or how I'd gotten back. Bea wasn't with me." Her voice cracked on the last sentence.

Aziraphale stood to go to her side again, but she waved him back into his seat. "No, no, I'm fine. So. I was sick with worry, but Bea came back the next day. I tried to talk to her about what happened but she just kept saying I'd dreamed it. She acted weird, all distant and washed-out like, and that's how she's been ever since." She took a deep breath. "The day after that, we got a call from Alice's hospital so we went to see her. She was better, 100%, no evidence that her heart had ever had any trouble at all. The doctors said it was a miracle like they'd never seen before." Aedan's expression darkened. "That's how I knew it was a devil Bea'd been to see, and that she'd signed her soul away."

"Not all of it," Crowley broke in. His speech was slightly slurred — it took a lot of alcohol to get a demon drunk, but he was getting there. "Just a tiny piece. Well," he clarified as the angel and the girl stared at him, "she _did_ promise her whole sssoul to Hell. But for now, they only took a fragment of it — as a down payment, you know. That's why she's acting strange, 'washed out' as you said, but is still able to function like a human being. The rest of her soul is payable upon death."

"And then…then they take it all?" Aedan asked. "Take her soul down…down there?"

"Hate to break it to you," Crowley said, and he seemed genuinely apologetic, "but yeah. I've never heard of a person who signed their soul to Hell managing to get out of the deal."

"But," Aziraphale interrupted, "that won't happen to Beatrice. We will get her contract back, and the piece of soul too, as soon as we find this office—"

"I know where it is," Crowley said. "It's the Earthly Branch of the Department of Soul Contracts. I'm the one who suggesssted an earthly branch," he said proudly. "In this day and age, why make demons come all the way up from Hell and travel all around looking for humans who might be interested in selling their souls?" Wine sloshed from the mouth of his third bottle of wine as he waved it about. "Just give 'em a call, or leave business cards in hospitals and government buildings and other places full of dessssperate people, and they'll come right to you. It's much more efficient."

"All right, good," Aziraphale said, "you know the place. See, what did I tell you?" he said to Aedan, smiling encouragingly at her. "With a demon on our side, we'll figure this out, easy as can be."

Crowley snorted. "You think infiltrating a department of Hell, Earth-based or not, is going to be _easy_ , angel?"

Aziraphale was searching for a reply when Aedan broke into a gargantuan yawn. The sun had set long ago. "Oh!" the angel tittered, "I'd forgotten you're human — you must get some sleep!"

"I'm fine," Aedan protested. "Let's plan this thing out."

"Nah," Crowley said, "We'll all think more clearly if we wait till tomorrow to brainstorm."

"That's right," Aziraphale laughed, "the poor dear needs his sleep to function properly."

"Oh? How long has he been your parolee?" Aedan asked curiously.

"Er—" said Aziraphale.

"A while," Crowley broke in.

"Yes. A while."

"…Okay. Well, I'll be on my way then, my car's just down the roa — Oh no, I bet they towed it!" she cried.

Aziraphale closed his eyes a moment. "No, no, it'll be right where you left it," he assured her.

She grinned. "Having an angel sidekick, that's something a girl could get used to."

"Sidekick?" Aziraphale exclaimed, scandalized.

"I must say," Aedan said as she headed for the front of the shop, "I'm pleased Heaven's okay with the drinking thing — that's something else Mam'll die of shock to learn. And tomorrow," she added before stepping out the door, "you'll have to tell me what an angel's doing running a bookshop!"

They watched her walk to her car down the street. Once it had driven away, Crowley turned to Aziraphale.

"Okay. Please tell me the whole 'parolee' thing is a lie, and you're not _really_ trying to reform me back to Heaven's side. Because that's _not_ going to happen."

"Why else would I have kissed you, if not to seduce you back into angelhood?"

"Aziraphale. Do _not_ joke about this. …You _are_ joking, aren't you?"

The angel's mouth twitched.

"Aziraphale!" Crowley laughed and punched the angel's arm. "That's not funny!"

The angel laughed too. "I'm so relieved you aren't angry anymore," he said happily.

 _Oops_. Crowley's expression switched from laughing to stormy faster than the bookshop's sign flipped from _open_ to _closed_ at the approach of a keen looking customer.

"Oh, I'm still mad all right, Az. You still haven't explained why you want to help this girl. No offense, but helping people is rarely your prime objective when you can't get something out of it, and did you forget that she _tried to kill me—"_

Aziraphale did his best to look affronted. "Excuse me, helping humans is _always_ my prime objective, I am an _angel_. And I know she tried to kill you, dear — if she'd succeeded I would never have gotten over it, but for whatever reason the holy water failed, and she's not out to hurt you any more. So it's all settled, isn't it?"

"That doesn't explain why you didn't just send her on her way with some apology for her loss, why we're planning on breaking into an office _run by Hell_ to save a soul that's probably past saving—"

"My dear, don't you understand?" Aziraphale said earnestly. "Everything is different, now that the world _hasn't_ ended, thanks to us!"

"If it's thanks to us, it's only to our incompetence—"

"Yes, yes," the angel said impatiently, waving that comment away. "But that day you held my hand and faced _Him_ , you know who I mean — Crowley, we picked a _side_. And it wasn't Heaven, and it wasn't Hell. It was the side they never told us existed, but the one we've always been on after all. It was _Earth_."

The demon was staring at him, eyes wide and shining with an emotion the angel could not name from behind his sunglasses. He didn't say anything, however, so Aziraphale continued.

"You are correct," the angel admitted, "that there have been times I've failed to place humanity first." He adjusted his glasses on his nose. "But much of that is because I have always helped them for _Heaven's_ sake. Now, _now_ , I'm going to help them for _their_ sake! And you too, you picked Earth's side too, it is up to us to help them togeth — why are you looking at me like that?"

"I have never wanted to kiss you so badly as I do right now."

Aziraphale's face flushed. "Well, take off your sunglasses and go right ahead."

They kissed.

Humans liked to compare good things to Heaven. Aziraphale had experienced Heaven, and kissing Crowley was nothing like that place. This was much warmer, and much sweeter, and he never wanted it to end.

It was several timeless minutes before Crowley pulled his mouth just far enough away to ask, "Do you…would you, want to spend the night at my place?"

"My dear," Aziraphale chuckled, squeezing his demon's hand, "I thought you'd never ask."


End file.
